


You and Me in the Mornings

by MrsCalculation



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27779824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsCalculation/pseuds/MrsCalculation
Summary: Otabek misses having early-morning not-dates at Yuri's favorite café.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22
Collections: The Yuri!!! on Ice Secret Santa - Edition 2020





	You and Me in the Mornings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esin_of_Sardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esin_of_Sardis/gifts).



> An exchange gift for [Esin_of_Sardis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Esin_of_Sardis). Enjoy!
> 
> Thank you to the lovely [flailingensues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailingensues/pseuds/flailingensues) for the beta and for all the encouragement!!!

“You’ll be late to class.”

“Don’t care. Want coffee.” Yuri’s movements are stunted, his body on a delay from the directions his brain gives, and he clambers around the apartment with far less grace than Otabek is used to. He knocks a few textbooks into his bag, then digs around and pulls one out again. He squints at it, puts it back on the counter, then grunts and jerks to look at Otabek suddenly. “Wait. Will _you_ be late?”

Otabek shrugs carefully. “Don’t have office hours until the afternoon,” he says honestly. “I just wanted to make sure you made it to class on time.”

“Feltsman can deal with it. Besides, what’s the point of being on time if I’d just fall asleep? Give me five minutes, then we can head out.”

“Sure,” Otabek says, then leans back against Yuri’s doorframe. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but Otabek’s not entirely awake yet, either, so he’ll take it. He’s not quite sure when he became someone who needed a cup of anything caffeinated to be a functional human being in the mornings, but it probably was around the same time that he stopped getting enough sleep solely because of the amount of late-afternoon coffee he was drinking, which, incidentally, lined up with his regular not-dates with Yuri at his favorite café most days.

Otabek thumps his head lightly on the doorframe and sighs. Never in his undergraduate career had he found himself reliant on caffeine to get everything done in his day. He’d imagined getting his doctorate would be different, of course, but he never once thought that he’d develop a caffeine dependence not in response to the classes he’s both taking and teaching, but thanks to a certain grumpy blond physics major he’s driven to class every day this semester.

“Where the fuck is my other boot,” the physics major in question grumbles while pulling shit out from under his bed, and that’s about the point when Otabek decides he may as well order ahead for them both since they won’t be making it out the door any time soon.

Yuri’s favorite café is a tiny, bright little shop with a loyal group of regulars and a barely-functional website. Yuri swears by the place, and while most coffee tastes the same to Otabek, he can definitely see why. It’s affordable and has a nice variety for such a small shop, and Otabek is fond of their pastries. He navigates through their shitty site now, ordering a tea for himself as a compromise between needing to wake up and not wanting to fuel addiction, then tries to determine which one of Yuri’s many usuals he’ll want today. Otabek decides on a large iced caramel monstrosity, with extra caramel syrup and whipped cream to cover up the extra shots of espresso that Yuri seems to need this morning, then adds an order of vatrushka for good measure since Yuri always forgets to eat when he’s been up late. He hesitates at the _requests_ section at the bottom of his order, but quickly types _coffee in thermos, please_ and leaves a significant tip underneath. With any luck, Katsuki will be the one on to-go orders this morning and will put Yuri’s drinks in one of the big thermoses Otabek knows he keeps in the back for whatever reason.

Though he likes both of them, between the two owners, Katsuki is Otabek’s favorite. On bad days he slips Yuri an extra pastry with their orders, like he also knows that Yuri forgets to eat sometimes, and he’s never loud about his generosity. As nice as he is, the same can’t exactly be said of Viktor.

“I’m ready,” Yuri says, grabbing his key and helmet off the table by the door.

Otabek silently pushes off the doorframe and makes his way to the stairwell, pausing as he waits for Yuri to lock the door to his apartment. They make their way to Otabek’s motorcycle together, and Otabek waits until Yuri has his arms safely wrapped around Otabek’s torso before heading off in the opposite direction of the university to Yuri’s café of choice. Otabek slows to an idle in front of the shop instead of heading to the small lot around the corner, then pats Yuri’s hand.

“Order should already be inside,” he says to Yuri. “Hope you don’t mind that I ordered ahead.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Yuri says, arms still snug around Otabek.

“Didn’t want you to be too late.”

“Yeah, but we…” Yuri trails off, grip slackening as he moves to dismount.

Otabek shrugs, unsure what to say to Yuri’s incomplete thought. “Just go.”

Yuri runs a hand through his hair, obscuring his expression from Otabek, and heads to the entrance of the shop, helmet tucked under his arm. Otabek watches the door swing gently shut behind Yuri and wishes they’d had more time this morning. By the end of last semester they’d settled into the early-morning rhythm of waking up in the café, sipping their drinks and chatting about their upcoming day, but as Yuri’s graduation draws closer, his nights have grown longer, leaving them with more and more on-the-go mornings. The atmosphere of the shop had become somewhat of a calming consistency for Otabek, even when they were just running in to order to-go drinks served in their own thermoses. Though the caffeine may wake him up, it’s more the experience he craves.

A moment later, Yuri’s back, a white paper bag over his elbow and a soft redness to his face.

“Why’d you have them put it in the thermos?” he asks before Otabek can open his mouth. He’s already opening the bike’s saddlebag, arranging everything except the giant thermos inside neatly.

“I didn’t want it to spill on the ride to campus.” It had seemed obvious to Otabek, since the flimsy paper to-go cups wouldn’t withstand the bike ride to campus.

Yuri pouts as he unscrews the cap to the thermos and takes a sip. “Oh,” he says, licking his lips to catch the cream. He misses a little, just at the peak of his top lip, and Otabek tries not to stare. “This is exactly what I needed. Thanks, Beka.”

Otabek looks away and tightens the strap on his helmet. “It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

“No, really,” Yuri says, screwing the lid back on to put it in the saddlebag, too. “Thanks for the coffee. And for, ah, always driving me out here in the mornings.”

Otabek would shrug again, but Yuri is already settling in behind him. “Sure,” he says instead, then starts off towards campus.

* * *

Most days Otabek has no trouble focusing once he’s on campus. He has the gift of solitude, which is all he’s ever needed to get things done, when he’s crammed away in the tiny closet he pretends is an office, but today he’s got reports to grade and a translation to work on, not to mention office hours for the intro class he’s teaching, and he can’t focus on any of it.

Yuri hadn’t looked at him once as he’d said goodbye for the day, just dug through the café bag to get out his vatrushka, then shoved the bag, still full of melonpan that Otabek definitely hadn’t ordered, at Otabek’s chest. He’d turned to enter the building, and Otabek had been ready to chalk the brusqueness up to lateness and go about his day, but then Yuri had turned around, stared determinedly at some unknown spot in the distance, and asked Otabek to pick him up after lab in the afternoon.

It was a ridiculous thing to ask. Otabek has picked Yuri up from every lab since last semester without fail. Yet Otabek absolutely cannot stop thinking about it.

Otabek manages through his day slowly, cursing his newfound need for caffeine since the tea clearly didn’t do its job, then having to fight that thought away when it brings him back to coffee, and Yuri drinking coffee, and cream on Yuri’s lip as he drinks coffee, and Yuri, and Yuri being weird this morning, and, and, _and—_

And a quiet first-year stumbles in to double check a few things in a report before she turns it in, so Otabek pushes back to focus for the rest of the afternoon.

Finally yet too soon, it’s time for Otabek to leave to get Yuri. He tucks the yet-ungraded reports into his bag and heads out, arriving at the physical sciences building all too soon. Yuri’s already leaning against the wall outside, his hood up and his nose in his phone, when Otabek gets there. He looks up as he hears the bike, and his face seems vaguely flushed after waiting in the cold.

“Am I late?” Otabek asks as Yuri approaches.

“Nah, I just finished a few minutes ago,” Yuri says, then pauses to take off his hood before putting on his helmet. “Hey, uh,” he says before he actually gets the helmet on. He looks at Otabek for a second, then looks away, making no move to speak again.

“Yes?” Otabek prompts, nervous for no identifiable reason. Yuri had been off this morning, but it was just a rushed morning, right? Nothing to be nervous about.

“No, I just. Wanted to know if we could go to dinner tonight. Or sometime.”

Otabek blinks. “Yeah, of course, Yura. We go out almost every day.”

“Ugh, no, I mean—never mind.” He shoves the helmet on and moves to get on the bike.

“Wait, Yura—” he catches Yuri’s wrist before he can sit, then angles himself to look him in the eye. Between the helmet visor and the plane difference, it’s awkward, but he pushes on. “Not _never mind_. What do you mean?”

“Oh my god, don’t make me—” Yuri cuts himself off and looks away again. “I _mean_ like a date, dumbass. You’re all nice to me, noticing my favorite coffee and driving me to campus every morning and hanging out with me every night so I thought—no, never mind, can you just take me home?”

Otabek waits for just a second too long to respond and Yuri starts to pull his wrist away, but then Otabek swings himself off the bike and flips his visor up to meet Yuri eye-to-eye.

“Yura,” he starts, then hesitates a second before flipping Yuri’s visor up, too. He’s bright red underneath it, his eyebrows drawn together as his gaze finally flicks to Otabek’s. “I would love to.”

* * *

“I cannot believe you chose to come here,” Yuri says, pointedly ignoring Viktor’s flailing and cooing coming from the pastry counter behind him.

“You suggested it, I just agreed.”

“You’re the one with the bike! You could have driven us literally anywhere else.”

“Nah,” Otabek says, daring to reach across the table to take Yuri’s hand. It has the dual benefit of making him stop complaining _and_ turning him a bright shade of red, even if it does increase the volume of the cooing. “I know you like it here. We can try somewhere else new next time.”

Otabek watches as Yuri mulls the idea of _next time_ over and decides he likes it. “Yeah,” he says. “But I’m paying next time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I may explore a little more of the background of this story in another fic, so let me know if you're interested in that! :)
> 
> As always, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://mrscalculation.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MrsCalculation) @MrsCalculation!


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